Exodus 7:17-20 - Homiletics

God's punishments appropriate and terrible

( Exodus 7:17-20 ), There was something peculiarly appropriate in the first judgment falling upon the Nile. The Nile had been made the instrument of destruction to the Israelites by the first tyrannical Pharaoh (probably Seti I .). It had been defiled with the blood of thousands of innocent victims. Crocodiles had in its waters crushed the tender limbs of those helpless infants, and had stained them with a gore that in God's sight could never be forgotten. The king, and the persons who were his instruments, had in so doing polluted their own holy river, transgressed their own law, offered insults to one of the holiest of their own deities. And all for the destruction of God's people. So, now that destruction was coming upon themselves, now that the firstborn were doomed ( Exodus 4:23 ), and the catastrophe of the Red Sea was impending, the appropriate sign, which threatened carnage, was given—the Nile was made to run with blood. The Egyptians had among their traditions one which said that the Nile had once for eleven days flowed with honey. As this supposed miracle indicated a time of peace and prosperity, so the present actual one boded war and destruction. Again, Pharaoh's especial crime at this time was, that he despised God. God therefore caused his own chief deity to be despised. There are indications that, about this period, a special Nile-worship had set in. Hapi, the Nile-god, was identified with Phthah and Ammon—he was declared to stand "alone and self-created"—to be "the Father of all the gods," "the Chief on the waters," "the Creator of all good things," "the Lord of terrors and of choicest joys." "Mortals" were said to "extol him, and the cycle of Gods "—he stood above them all as the One Unseen and Inscrutable Being. "He is not graven in marble," it was said; "he is not beheld; he hath neither ministrants nor offerings; he is not adored in sanctuaries; his abode is not known; no shrine of his is found with painted figures; there is no building that can contain him;" and again, "unknown is his name in heaven; he doth not manifest his forms; vain are all representations." Menephthah was a special devotee of Hapi. Nothing could have seemed to him more terrible and shocking, than the conversion of his pure, clean, refreshing, life-giving, god-like stream, into a mass of revolting putridity. And on the people the judgment was still more terrible. Under ordinary circumstances, the whole nation depended on the Nile for its water supply. There were no streams in the country other than the Nile branches, no brooks, no rills, no springs or fountains. The sudden conversion of all the readily accessible water—even such as was stored in houses—into blood, was sickening, horrible, tremendous. Scarcely could any severer punishment of the people have been devised. If a partial remedy had not been found ( Exodus 7:24 ), it would have been impossible for them to endure through the "seven days" ( Exodus 7:25 ). So fearful are the judgments of God upon those who offend him I